Marines Face Possible War Crimes Accusation for Desecration Video

Posted on Jan 12, 2012

YouTube / semperfiLoneVoice

Footage purportedly showing four American soldiers urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters surfaced on YouTube on Wednesday. The desecration of dead combatants is a serious crime under the Geneva Conventions and U.S. military law.

The Marine Corps assured the public that “the actions portrayed are not consistent with our core values and are not indicative of the character of the Marines in our Corps.” However, there have been incidents—including the slaying of three Afghan civilians and subsequent coverup by a “kill squad” two years ago, the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and the slaughter of 24 Iraqis by a Marine staff sergeant in 2005—that run against that claim. —ARK

The Guardian:

In the graphic short video, four soldiers in combat gear and carrying weapons are seen acting in unison as they urinate on three bloodied corpses. One of the soldiers sighs with relief, another says “yeah” and a third laughs. One remarks: “Have a great day, buddy”. Another says: “Golden, like a shower”.

Thank you, Sinbad. I wish you a long life of raging against the machine too. When you stop resisting they take everything away because they have no conscience and are moral pygmies. What has happened to America should be a warning to everyone who thinks Fascism can never happen as long as you have elections and a supposedly ‘free press’. A long time ago someone predicted that if Fascism ever came to America it would come via the CIA and that is exactly what has happened.

perhaps if you think about a bit you’ll understand
that I’m nothing like that little creep Sinbad and
that maybe your program of “unequal and thus
separate” isn’t really the best idea, but does work
really well in furthering the aims of the Islamist
extremists and will result in an endless line of
ignorant little Sinbads…..—heterochromatic

I really don’t understand where you’re getting
“unequal and thus separate”. I’ve never preached
isolation. We’re there aren’t we? My whole point is
simply the cultures are not equal. We all make
cultural value judgments every single day of our
lives. Can you honestly say that, as a resident of
NYC, you don’t go about your daily routine making
value judgments based on how you esteem the various
cultures you encounter?

I’m not the problem, you are. You and your eugenics- based theory of survival of the fittest and, of course, you will decide who is fit to live or die. You see yourself as some kind of all-knowing deity but you’re just an ignorant, callous person with a nauseating sense of boundless entitlement. Things you share with the Pentagon and the CIA. If any leader had arisen in Pakistan or Afghanistan to lead those countries down the path of enlightenment the United States would have had them killed.
===================================================
diamond,

You’re a gem of human being that gives hope to our troubled humanity.

Articulate, well read and informed and with a deep sense for truth and justice, you’re a beacon of enlightenment.

May you be blessed with a long healthy life so you can continue your enlightened struggle for truth and justice!

I’m not the problem, you are. You and your eugenics- based theory of survival of the fittest and, of course, you will decide who is fit to live or die. You see yourself as some kind of all-knowing deity but you’re just an ignorant, callous person with a nauseating sense of boundless entitlement. Things you share with the Pentagon and the CIA. If any leader had arisen in Pakistan or Afghanistan to lead those countries down the path of enlightenment the United States would have had them killed.

Torrijos, Lumumba, Martin Luther King, Allende, both the Kennedys ...on and on it goes.

‘In April 1978, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power in Afghanistan in reaction to a crackdown against the party by that country’s repressive government. The PDPA was committed to radical land reform that favored the peasants, trade union rights, an expansion of education and social services, equality for women and the separation of church and state. The PDPA also supported strengthening Afghanistan’s relationship with the Soviet Union. Such policies enraged the wealthy semi-feudal landlords, the Muslim religious establishment (many mullahs were also big landlords) and the tribal chiefs. They immediately began organising resistance to the government’s progressive policies, under the guise of defending Islam.
(Norm Dixon, Green Left Weekly, 19th September 2001).

As you can plainly see, if Afghanistan is not a hub of enlightenment and democracy it’s not for lack of trying. But those who wanted to use Afghanistan to give the Soviet Union its ‘Vietnam’ didn’t give a damn. They have played with the lives and destiny of the people of Afghanistan as if they were pieces on a chessboard, something they have done all over the third world. If America is such a beacon of civilization and perfect harmony why does the US government never hesitate to kill and abuse people if it suits their geo-political purposes?

Look at what happened to Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen:

He arrived alone at New York airport from Tunisia, where he and his wife had been visiting her relatives, at 2pm on the 26th September 2002 and waited for his connecting flight to Canada. Pulled aside in immigration he was fingerprinted and his
Canadian passport was photocopied. No one would explain anything and he was not allowed to make a phone call.He was accused of having links to ‘Al Qaeda’ and having suspicious friends.

‘(They) put me in chains, on my wrists and ankle and took me in a van to a place where many people were held’, Arar later recounted (p. 255, ‘Witch Hunts’). The Canadian government was told nothing of his whereabouts. All requests to phone a lawyer, his family or the Canadian government were ignored. Based on ‘classified information’ Arar was deported/rendered to Syria.

On arrival in Jordan he was put in a van with several men who beat him every time he tried to speak. They then delivered him to the Syrian border and a hell that would continue until October 2003. After interrogation he was locked up in a dark, filthy place he calls ‘the grave’ (p. 255, Witch Hunts). He was in there for 10 months and 10 days. He was tortured by being beaten with two inch thick electrical cable, ‘Mainly on his hands’. He was threatened with electric shocks and worse torture if he didn’t ‘confess’ (p. 255, ‘Witch Hunts’. He told them he had been to Afghanistan, a country he had never been in, to stop the beating. He urinated on himself twice during the beating. On the 9th August 2003, Arar was taken to see the investigator. He was kicked until he wrote a statement that was dictated to him and signed his thumbprint on the last page. On the 5th October 2003 Arar was told that he would be going back to Canada. Perhaps you can explain to me how this differs from something a primitive, backward state would do.

It seems that the name of Arabian Sinbad has gotten under the skin of the two rabid ugly Zionists to the point that they cannot communicate with each other without mentioning the Arabian Sinbad. Even when having their own little fights, they can’t forget how deep Arabian Sinbad managed to get under their filthy thick skins!

So Arabian Sinbad feels happy and fulfilled that he managed to put those two loser bigots to task. And furthermore, since Arabian Sinbad has given up hope that such two savages will ever see the light of truth and justice, he wants to say a final prayer, which goes as follows:

“May both of you be consumed by your bigotry and hatred till you drop dead, so, perchance, humanity might be a little safer without two filthy pigs among them contaminating others with their disease!” (Amen!)

GW—- sorry, but I can’t scale back my West-hatred
for I’m not in possession of any.

I live in NYC and love it.

I agree that most of the people in Af/Pak live
according to rules that are, to me, repulsive and
suggest that you might consider that their rules have
something to do with the conditions under which they
live. perhaps you might recognize that the West lived
under similar rules when western people lived under
similar conditions…. and that the rules here
changed as the conditions changed.

perhaps you might recognize that the great majority
of the Islamist program is a reactionary one that
seeks to avoid those “rule” changes by cutting off
contact with the west in an attempt to keep living
conditions static.

perhaps if you think about a bit you’ll understand
that I’m nothing like that little creep Sinbad and
that maybe your program of “unequal and thus
separate” isn’t really the best idea, but does work
really well in furthering the aims of the Islamist
extremists and will result in an endless line of
ignorant little Sinbads…..

“so a rigid hierarchical culture such as the one from
which the United States
was engendered marks the US along with the European
as coming from depraved
and inferior strands of humanity.”—heterochromatic

From a perspective of traits engendering culture,
indeed you are correct. In the case of the West, the
human rights aspect of culture has evolved from
something inferior. Unfortunately, that sort of
evolution has occurred in many other parts of the
world. Afghanistan and Pakistan leap to mind.

Perhaps if you scale back the West-hate, you’d see
the world more clearly. As it stands, you’re
starting to sound like Arabian Sinbad.

Humans are social animals and culture is an
expression/extension of those biological traits that
made us such. That’s why I’m not a cultural
relativist. That is, while I believe we should
attempt to understand other cultures on their own
terms, I don’t believe that all cultures are created
equal. For example, I don’t believe that rigid,
hierarchical (read: anti-egalitarian) cultures are an
expression of a desirable trait (or collection of
traits). And we certainly shouldn’t countenance such
a culture for the sake of political correctness. A
dialog is fine, but I don’t think such cultures get
an equal seat at the table right out of the gate.

Just for the record, I find all religion repugnant.
The highest authority we recognize should be human
reason.

If the West is so terrible, why aren’t you living
elsewhere? Surely one of the cultural paradises like
Afghanistan or Pakistan would be more to your liking.
I imagine a boundlessly compassionate cosmopolitan such
as yourself feels suffocated by American provincialism
and would find many more kindred spirits among the
Taliban. Off you go now. No need to equivocate
further.

GW Hipster—well I can agree with you that most
people don’t view cultures as equal and I can agree
with my Busshist friends about European and American
cultures and their Christianity as being hopelessly
inferior and debased and and less than fully human.

But what does any of that have to do with whether all
nations should have a desire to sit together and talk
as way to lessen their differences and the tensions
arising from them?
Americans have a strong belief in discussing things,
even with people that someone such as yourself who is
here playing the fool would label as participants in
an inferior culture.
After fighting the second enormous war of the 20th
century, we set up such a forum in Turtle Bay.

I’m one of those believers in talking with what you
might label culturally inferior people and this reply
to you serves as demonstration of my earnestness.

“The theme I’ve been exploring here is simply that all cultures are not created equal. I really don’t see what the difficulty is. From a biological perspective, it’s quite clear that not all members of a species are created equal. Genetics matter.”

Indeed. And now you’ve strayed into eugenics, something the Nazis and Hitler put into action - enough of those weasel words,set up the gas chambers. I actually read a book written years before Hitler came to power called ‘Man the Unknown’ in which the author suggested that those who just weren’t up to scratch and didn’t meet his standards should be put out their misery by the use of scientific ‘gases’. This is the message of eugenics and you apparently believe it’s perfectly fine to believe such dangerous nonsense. On the other hand you seem blissfully unaware of where your thesis would lead if taken to its ‘logical’ conclusion.

As for treating women as third class citizens you should bear in mind that some of the worst persecutors of women in Afghanistan were armed and funded by the United States.

‘Washington’s favoured Mujaheddin faction was one of the most extreme, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The West’s distaste for terrorism did not apply to this unsavoury “freedom fighter”. Hekmatyar was notorious in the 1970s for throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. After the Mujaheddin took Kabul in 1992, Hekmatyar’s forces rained US-supplied missiles and rockets on that city — killing at least 2000 civilians — until the new government agreed to give him the post of prime minister. Osama bin Laden was a close associate of Hekmatyar and his faction.

Hekmatyar was also infamous for his side trade in the cultivation and trafficking in opium. Backing of the Mujaheddin from the CIA coincided with a boom in the drug business. Within two years, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was the world’s single largest source of heroin, supplying 60% of US drug users.’ (Norm Dixon, Green Left Weekly, 19th September 2001)

One of the biggest schools for girls in Afghanistan was run by the Taliban. It was the friends of the USA who went to war with Russia to prevent girls being educated, ghouls like Hekmatyar and his friends for example. And it was was the Taliban, not the Mujaheddin, that burned the poppy fields, thereby making it inevitable that the CIA would engineer the invasion of Afghanistan and drive them from power. This may not conform to your black and white view of the world but it happens to be true.

The theme I’ve been exploring here is simply that all cultures are not created equal. I really don’t see what the difficulty is. From a biological perspective, it’s quite clear that not all members of a species are created equal. Genetics matter. Similarly, with regard to cultures, values matter. Those cultures whose values compromise their overall fitness are at risk of being selected against. And don’t make the mistake of thinking that I don’t evaluate the U.S. as potentially at risk. But if you think it’s culturally fit to treat women as third class citizens, while maintaining no mechanism for cultural correction or improvement (as the Western Powers do or at least try to), then by all means, give Pakistan an equal seat at the table. Had the Confederacy survived, I guess diamond, PatrickHenry, and Arabian Sinbad would be advocating for them as well.

Of course, the best way to address the population problem is through improving education and raising the standard of living for women, but Diamond believes that Pakistani culture is the equal of ours just the way it is. Everything is A-OK; no potential security threat here.

“Well, diamond and the rest of you, answer this simple question: Do you believe all cultures should have a seat at the table of world governance and an equal say?”

Is this a trick question? Of course they should. How else can justice be served? The whole idea that some Anglo/Christo/centric Fascist dictatorship should rule the UN and the world is outrageous and unjust and leads to most of the problems in the third world and the creation of violence and crime. It’s the old people and non-people divide that has caused most of the wars and an endless chain of disadvantage, ignorance and injustice. Why should certain anglo/Christo countries have a veto in the UN? That in itself is ridiculous and a throw back to the Middle Ages and should be altered as soon as possible. The old ‘shut up and do as I say, not as I do’ slavery can’t go on indefinitely. There has to be a better way of settling disputes than endless war and oppression. Even people like David Kilcullen are now admitting that the invasion of Iraq was a disastrous blunder and he added that it’s not even yet clear whether the West will ever recover from the self-inflicted damage it’s caused.

So maybe that question won’t need to be asked: at some point maybe it will become irrelevant because the third world will take that seat at the table of world governance by force. Remember what happened to Rome? I’m sure they thought they were invulnerable too but in the end they just had too much empire and too many enemies. They made the barbarians their mercenaries and when they came knocking at the gate they couldn’t defeat them any more because they had trained them too well. That should ring a bell.

By heterochromatic, January 15 at 6:16 pm
==========================================
So the question is: Is heterochomatic another little Hitler, or is he the same “Hitler” writing under another inglorious name?!

Or perhaps matic is another sadistic rabid Zionist who is jealous of the ass-whipping I’ve been giving to his Zionist brethren, so he wants to feel some of that whipping himself.

Sorry you little heter whatever, I don’t whip little, smelly filthy asses! Once you clean and perfume your ass, I might consider giving you a whipping, lest you die in longing for that sweet whipping on your ass!

By “G"utless “W"itless Hitler, January 15 at 3:49 pm Link to this comment

Arabian Sinbad,

Saying a Yemeni Arab discovered coffee is like saying
Europeans discovered tobacco. The indigenous people of
Ethiopia were well acquainted with coffee long before
your precious Yemeni “discoverer” came along to tell
them it was good. Wow! Talk about irony. Get the
plank out of your own eye, you Arab-centric colonial
pig!
===================================================
Tell a Hitlarite rabid Zionist that the Arabian Peninsula was the cradle of the Semitic race and you find him immediately having the audacity of practicing Revisionist history and shamelessly changing the subject to tell us that it was not an Arab who discovered coffee, but Ethiopians. This is despite the fact that the Yemeni city of Mocha and Arabica beans has given universal labels to such commodity.

And further more, in his ugly shameless audacity, Arabian Sinbad is no more a “rabid Anti-Semite,” but an “Arab centric colonial pig.” Where do you get all that genius from, little Hitler?! America and Europe should tap on your genius, so per chance you can practice some of your Revisionist history and tell them that they are not financially ruined or morally bankrupt, but it is Arabs, and particularly Palestinians who are causing all this propaganda havoc! So why are you waiting to use the atomic bombs that you used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in your glorious past?!!!

Saying a Yemeni Arab discovered coffee is like saying
Europeans discovered tobacco. The indigenous people of
Ethiopia were well acquainted with coffee long before
your precious Yemeni “discoverer” came along to tell
them it was good. Wow! Talk about irony. Get the
plank out of your own eye, you Arab-centric colonial
pig!

By “G"utless “W"itless Hitler, January 15 at 1:56 pm Link to this comment

diamond,

You’ve obviously completely missed it. Arabian sinbad
is a rabid anti-semite (or more likely a troll).
=================================================
How many times, stupid little Hitler, I announced on these very Truthdig threads that blackmailing me with the label of “Anti-Semitic” does not work? Do you know why, stupid Hitler?! Simply because I consider myself more pure Semitic that all the Zionists of the word. You Zionists are in the business of appropriating things for yourself when you think you can use it as blackmailing and distortion.

Once, I entered a restaurant without knowing the owners. I spotted an item labeled as “Israeli coffee.” Out of curiosity I ordered this Israeli coffee, which turned to be what has been called for hundreds of years as Arabic coffee and later on as “Turkish coffee.” Obviously, the owner never heard that it was a Yemeni Arab by the name of Khalid who discovered coffee in the fourteenth century and it was a Yemeni city called “Mocha” that first developed the first coffee-related industry in the word!

Likewise, many Israelis like to steal and appropriate for themselves other food items like “falafil” and “hummus;” two stables of Arabic cuisine for centuries.
Once I protested the Zionist’s stealing such Arabic food and drink items to a friend who responded by saying: “they have stolen a whole homeland from the Native Palestinians, so what is it for them to steal their cultural heritage!

You sure do a lot of between-the-lines reading there,
grammar queen. But I guess you just don’t get satire.
Touchy about Hitler still, huh? Tel you what, I’ll
withhold my joke about the JFK assassination to spare
you the obligatory pants-wetting indignation.

“Does anyone out their who’s not as dumb as a bucket of doorknobs actually think my name is meant as some sort of plug for Hitler? Christ! I took that name back during Bush II. Get it now?”

Calling yourself Hitler is not funny or even mildly amusing and indicates a need to shock. And it’s ‘there’ not ‘their’. Arabian Sinbad expresses opinions you don’t agree with. That does not make him a rabid anti-Semite or a troll and his right to express his opinion is protected under the First Amendment. You, however, called me a Jew (not a Zionist, important distinction) as an insult which makes you what you call him. You need to learn how to do satire: so far you’ve made a hash of it.

“But if you’ll take notice, we only treat those parts of the world like a toilet that by their own actions have shown themselves to be worthy of no better treatment. Cultures aren’t created equal. America is FAR from perfect but it’s a F***LOAD better than Pakistan and Afghanistan!”

I believe this is what’s known as Fascism.

But Walterbard has outdone you. He can see that it’s wrong to whip women for not dressing in a certain way but ignores the fact that orthodox Jews in Israel while sparing the whip still spit on little girls on their way to school because they aren’t dressed a certain way. They also spit on female journalists (Ann Barker, for example, who was spat on by a large group of Orthodox Jewish men while doing a story in Israel: she said the spit was ‘falling like rain’). No race or religion has a monopoly on stupidity or cruelty,as you two constantly demonstrate.

You’ve obviously completely missed it. Arabian sinbad
is a rabid anti-semite (or more likely a troll). With
my last post, I was clearly trading on the most cliched
Jewish stereotypes for satirical effect. Does anyone
out their who’s not as dumb as a bucket of doorknobs
actually think my name is meant as some sort of plug
for Hitler? Christ! I took that name back during Bush
II. Get it now?

When asked I proudly identify myself as a liberal-minded individual standing up for the voices and rights of like-minded souls all over the globe. I tend to disagree more often with most of the world’s ‘conservative’ set. - I can also answer direct questions no matter the direction of the questioner. I will add that I can’t recall ever cowering from an honest question. Particularly if I don’t know the answer.

-

I struggle to understand your views and values. You come off as one who believes in typical liberal issues but tack so wildly to the right, nearly verbatim, with Ultra-conservative, ultra-religious thinkers and advocates about the globe.

Am I correct in believing your litmus test for support relies heavily in favor of those who most adamantly opposes the U.S. and Israel? I guess what I’m asking is, why is it your view of the world mimics, nearly verbatim, the views of people such as Ali Khamenei, Hassan Nasrallah, Khaled Meshal and Ayman Zawahiri? Why have I never seen you defending the views of liberal thinkers amongst Arab Muslim populations? Is it that liberal Iranians, for example, fail to sufficiently hate and fear the U.S.? Do you detest Iranians (the majority) who wish nothing more than for the current Iranian system of governance to end?

Oh, and buddy can you spare a dime? You should be glad one business is booming even if it’s one you don’t like. I was baptized a Catholic but now I’m skeptical about everything, especially organized religion of any ilk. I don’t know why you would want to be so nasty about Jews. Some of the best, most progressive and smartest people in the world are Jews. But, of course you can say exactly the same about some Muslims, especially the ones with the courage to go out into the streets and demand change knowing Assad will try to blow their heads off.

Algebra was invented by a Muslim and almost every branch of science owes them something too. It was Persian, Muslim doctors who wrote the ‘Canon of Medicine’ which was the standard medical textbook for centuries. Without Mohammed Al Khwarizmi and his invention of algebra there would be no algorithms (even the word is based on his name) and so no computers and not a single plane could fly and Einstein could never have calculated the theory of relativity. The great technological advances of the West rest on Muslim discoveries. Every race and every religion has played its part but you are too fond of your prejudices to ever see it. However, you know you are gutless and witless and as the Germans say: ‘Selbst Erkenntnis ist der erste Weg zum Besserung’ - ‘Self knowledge is the first way to improvement’. You know the problem and you just need to fix it.

Start by not dividing human beings into groups of people and non-people. Your namesake did that and it’s a bad habit.

Sinbad—- you really are a silly little child….. that Holocaust thing in the mid-
1949’s is ancient history and them Jews have no right to keep bringing up.

but that so-much-worse than the industrial murder of million Nakba thingee
of 1948 must be trumpeted from every rooftop because it’s just like it
happened yesterday and the entire world must keep feeding, clothing and
providing free schooling and medical care for the grandchildren and great-
grandchildren.

You do realize don’t you that by siding with a guy
calling himself diamond, you’re probably unwittingly
aiding a Jew. Who else calls himself diamond but a
rapacious, hook-nosed, gold-hoarding, jewelry-hawking,
Zionist, baby eater with a 30% stake in an African
blood diamond mine, eh? Why, I bet he even has
controlling interest in tinfoil hat factory. And
brother, business is boomin’!

Did anyone else notice it was NPR courtesy of Neil Conan Talk of the
Nation that gave us the official version of how this incident should
be viewed? That would be Neil Conan at NPR. Neil Conan the Talk of
the Nation.

Before I give the official version I should mention a few weeks ago I
stepped in a pile of dog shit left by a Great Dane. The shit pile was
so huge it swelled up around the sides of my shoes and over the back
of my heel.

I feel like I’m again stepping in a huge pile of dog shit by
reiterating what was said on Conan’s show but it seems important to
do it.

A spokesman for the military came on Neil Conan’s Talk of the Nation
and said war is “challenging” but many soldiers behave admirably.

Talk of the Nation host Neil Conan let that bit of verbal excrement
bounce off his forehead without so much as a groan of revulsion.

Going to work each day, sitting in an air conditioned cube in a
comfortable chair with no window view and working your ass off for
eight hours in the presence of people you may or may not like can be
challenging, just like cleaning your shoes and changing your socks
after stepping in a deep and wide pile of dog shit at NPR Talk of
the Nation with Neil Conan is challenging.

War is not challenging. War is horrifying, agonizing, brutal,
violent, deafening, blinding, barbaric, ruthless and murderous—even
in the sanitized speech of past eras people were allowed to say war
is hell.

How dare you let an official come on your show and use such sanitized,
benign language and not correct him! Particularly when you are all
too eager to correct any caller who speaks out against the war
machine. You are nothing more than a mouthpiece for the propaganda
machine anytime the issue is war. You should be on FOX not NPR.

By “G"utless “W"itless Hitler, January 15 at 7:27 am Link to this comment

And another diamond shows its flaws. More tinfoil
hats, please.
==================================================
And another fanatic Zionist savage glorifying Hitler by taking his sake name as his nom de plume! I do understand the appreciation, since, in fact, the real white Hitler served Zionism well since he provided them with an eternal source of blackmailing the world and making the oft-exaggerated Holocaust as big business for Zionists through which they drew and continue to draw billions of dollars in revenues to finance their terrorist colonialist enterprise in Palestine!!!

I maintain that without the aid of Hitler, illegitimate Zionist Israel with all of its atrocities would not have happened, the fu..n bloody Balfour Anglo-Saxon declaration not withstanding!

“The Marines in those images are guilty of loathsome behaviors. Some here wish to condemn the entire conflict and its participants (on one side) by these images. It’s not that simple and should not be treated as such.”

I DO CONDEMN THE ENTIRE CONFLICT on one side. Because it’s a lie inside a lie inside a con job. The Iraq war was a lie. 9/11 was a lie. The Vietnam War was a lie which is why Daniel Ellsberg felt duty bound to release the catalog of lies and deceptions by the Pentagon and the CIA to the American public. They actually wrote it all down and kept a record of their lies, deceptions and atrocities but it wasn’t for public consumption. It was only to be seen by the elite for their information and no doubt gratification at getting away with it. Ellsberg made sure they didn’t and for that they wanted to lock him up for the rest of his life. Sound familiar? Manning and Wikileaks is just a re-run of the atrocity that was the Vietnam War.

The soldiers themselves are simply pawns in their game, as they have been dating back to before World War I and ever since, and, of course, the crimes committed by the elite, including treason, are far worse than pissing on some dead bodies. But the reason this is so shocking to the American public is that Americans have been brainwashed into thinking everyone else is the bad guy but never their side. Never the shining knights. They are the good guys and don’t you forget it - even when they rape women (and men as in Bagram, and children as in Abu Ghraib) and massacre civilians, including babies and use uranium depleted weapons and white phosphorous on civilians as they did in Fallujah and agent orange as they did in Vietnam and incendiary bombs as they did in Dresden. The Marines’ behaviour has a long and dishonorable history but is no more atrocious and probably less atrocious than that of the people who sent them into this country on a lie, because THEY know the truth and do it anyway.

“The Few, The Proud, The Marines”...how’s that workin’ for ya? Oh, wait.. One IED away from a couple of limbs and then he/she goes to a local church for help because the VA benefits terminated…another Vet does suicide by cop… Oh, but wait…did YOU vote? did YOU let your voice be heard at an OCCUPY event? Do YOU know that your Congressmen and Senators are outnumbered 4:1 by lobbyists? He/She took an oath to defend The Constitution, not Exxon or Shell. Are YOU surprised that you are surprised?

“False Flag”
“A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran”

“It’s amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with,” the intelligence officer said. “Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn’t give a damn what we thought.

Bradley Manning was spying for the same reason others do (assuming his motivation was not that of money). I have no problem believing that Manning believed he was spying for his country. - The problem there, you see, is in how very few Americans will look on his actions or motivations as heroic at all. Most will correctly see what he did was stupidly dangerous. In most countries Manning would have already been put to death. - I personally oppose the death penalty - Manning will be a hero in prison for a very long time.

“Don’t get caught”, right?

If media reports are correct everything Manning admits to doing is considered spying in every circle on the planet. Even you see what he did as spying. You are simply on the side of, what you perceive to be, his cause.

You can make all the excuses you wish. You’re being dishonest. Dishonest to yourself or dishonest with others. I don’t know you well enough to guess. I still have to wonder why you display absolutely no concern for Amir Hekmati. He’s already been sentenced to death.

A few of you here just so damn odd. You paste your own perceptions over other’s comments. You then take your inability to hear another and let soar with imagination.

Try hearing, diamond. Try and imagine different reasons for the comment I made on this subject. In no way did I imply fault but for the Marines themselves.

-

I’m guessing you’ve never seen combat or its effects on human behaviors. You’re not accustomed to thinking in these terms.

The act itself, the act of urinating on the fallen, was likely a statement. A statement either amongst themselves or toward their perceived enemy. I offered one of a thousand possible reasons for that statement. What I offered is plausible and possible when I consider what those particular soldiers have likely witnessed in their enemy. - Mutilating/Humiliating the enemy, both dead and alive, is common in Afghanistan.

The Marines in those images are guilty of loathsome behaviors. Some here wish to condemn the entire conflict and its participants (on one side) by these images. It’s not that simple and should not be treated as such.

no t really, he may have thought that what he was doing was “for you and me” but
you and me didn’t ask him to do the things that he did, but they’re really
something that he did on his own and for reasons that are his own. it was only he
who decided that he could do whatever he wished

“In no way do I condone what these Marines have done. I do have to wonder if this incident may have been the result of these marines repeatedly seeing, first hand, how the Taliban treat their killed and captured. - The Taliban regularly mutilate their captured and killed in order to humiliate their foes. In fact it’s common in many cultures.”

Oh for God’s sake! It’s always someone else’s fault. This time it’s the Taliban’s fault for setting a bad example to the shining knights in the US military. In Vietnam it was the fault of the Vietcong for being in their own country and defending it from invaders. And the fourteen year old Iraqi girl US soldiers pack raped and then murdered her and her entire family to get rid of the witnesses? Her fault. Wrong place, wrong time and looking too good. The 600,00 civilians the US military murdered in the Philippines? Their fault, of course, for being in the way of the shining knights as they went about their business of invading and occupying the Philippines. And, of course, the ultimate irony here is that the Taliban was created by the ISI and their CIA handlers from the millions of refugees who had fled into Pakistan to escape the war the Mujaheddin were fighting for America against the Russians. Talk about a self-inflicted wound and a self-fulfilling prophecy.

After reading the story about the man who had his eyes almost gouged out by US soldiers in Guantanamo Bay I can only say at least he’s only blind in one eye. People like Heterochromatic and Gutless Moronic Hitler are blind in both eyes. To them America is always the victim/hero even when it’s clear to anyone with eyes to see that America is the aggressor and is the perpetrator. Anything done by those they’ve invaded and occupied to defend themselves and take their country back is called ‘terrorism’. They didn’t call it that when the French Resistance stood up to the Nazis - they called it heroic. But now anyone who resists America’s corporatist military aggression is a ‘terrorist’. Neat. And when they kill some farmers and piss on their corpses it’s not their fault. The devil musta made them do it or their toilet training went wrong. The US military are only ever heroes and anyone who resists their war machine is a ‘terrorist’. Got that?

Pat, trying to explain Hamas as a “creation of
Israel” is simply more facile bullshit. they are what
they are and again you apply foolish standards that
you would never apply universally. it makes far more
(but still dubious) sense to describe Zionism as a
creation of Europe and Christian bigotry than it does
to try to lay Hamas at Israel’s feet.

Any attempt, should you care to make one. to really
do that will be exposed as ludicrous just as
attempting to explain al Qaeda as a creature of the
CIA falls apart.

I will absolutely agree with you that part of the
popularity of Hamas is attributable to reaction to
Israeli repression and ugliness, but much more is
attributable to the failure and corruption of Arafat
band of poseurs and kleptocrats as well as the
failure of the Palestinians to develop a decent
alternative.

It’s my wish that the Palestinians are freed from
both their Israeli oppressors and their own sets of
creeps.

And yet both PatrickHenry and Arabian sinbad hate
America from safely within American borders. I can,
with 100% certainty, guarantee you that were they
living in Afghanistan or Pakistan right now, they would
be neither “freedom fighter” nor harsh critic of the
Taliban. Why? Because they’re a pair of chickenshits.

You are falsely implying my statement in regard to Bradley Manning who did not spy but purposefully disclosed war crimes, there is a difference but I would’t expect you to know.

It’s a tragedy that some evil Taliban entity maimed someone but this evil occurs in every nation of the world, in their jails, by their police and silently condoned by their governments.

Now go back to your cubicle.

Tic,

When the hasbara trolls start parroting the favorite hypocritcal zionist lines of “oppressive fundementalist regime” or “Islamofacists” it will be called out for who they are and what they are doing, if you don’t agree with that then too bad.

As far as your belief that Hamas (a creation of Israel) has philosophies and
ideas and actions that are more ugly and extreme than Zionism’s is telling and shows where your loyaltys lie.

Hamas is only popular because of the oppression, indiscrimminate death and destruction Israel inflicts on Palestine.

“The Taliban cut the nose and ears off of a teen female for her attempts to escape, what she thought to be, cruel behavior. Mutilating this young woman is morally justified, as money was not the motivation for her torture.”
==================================================
IMax, don’t be an asshole, repeating this isolated incident to justify sweeping hate for those whose main concern and collective efforts is to fight for the freedom of their homeland from evil terrorist occupiers.

Everyday in America, I hear about a man killing his wife or vice versa; a mother killing her children, a man raping a child and killing him / her; a drunken killing a whole family, and on and on.

Yet no man of reason would dare to say that all Americans are evil, because there are evil Democrats and Republicans; evil Christians, Jews and Muslims; evil presidents, politicians and congress men and women.

Do yourself a favor and stop getting your information and incitement from the bigots, haters and evil propagandists!

ASS—you seem to have a problem with “white” people. you’re sort of childishly
funny that way.

hopefully you’ll lose this thing as you begin to mature into an adult and learn that
hatred and ignorance comes in all colors and is widely held and practiced by all,
including the Sinbads of the world.

Pat, I agree with you that some are fighting for no more than to rid their country
of foreign troops. ... and I agree that they should be held blameless for that desire
and only thought ill of for some of the things that they do.

Others fight for different things and the re-imposition of the Taliban rule that was
overthrown by our invasion can not, in any way, be considered as moral.

I may have a poorly functioning compass but you’re not working with much of an
ability to reason.

PatrickHenry - “They will fight for a cause and not for money and that is what separates a moral from an immoral war.”

On another recent thread Patrick wrote that spying is not spying if one is motivated by a passion other than money.

-

The Taliban cut the nose and ears off of a teen female for her attempts to escape, what she thought to be, cruel behavior. Mutilating this young woman is morally justified, as money was not the motivation for her torture.

Tito Okello in Uganda murdered more than 800,000 people. Money was never the issue.

PatrickHenry has a well established love of death if the cause is ‘just’. In his twisted rationale the United States may now resume water-boarding.

Much like the war of 1812, the invaders are paid and on a personal level would not choose to be there.

The defenders are not paid, trying to rid their country of the invaders who are committing assault and death on non combatants and who are not respecting the dead who are the kinsman of those residents of the invaded country they claim to be helping.

Then again I am familiar with your disfunctional moral compass and like most other zionists who populate this and other site find morality a foreign subject.

But fighting within the borders of one’s home land against terrorist, marauders, occupiers is not only moral but also the minimum ultimate national duty; those are called freedom-fighters in every book of basic justice, except of course in the book of savages, bigots, fanatic Zionists, white trash, white supremacists and those who talk and think through their filthy rectums!!!

and Pat, please stop calling people “Zionist parrots” with no justification other
than they disagree with you. It’s marks you as an ugly sort of an ass.

try beating down their claims rather than trying to dehumanizing them. you can’t
justify your own bullshit by saying that other bits of shit are unjustifiable.

are you willing to dismiss every said by a person supporting Hamas simply
because it’s said by a person supporting Hamas, a group whose philosophies and
ideas and actions are more ugly and extreme than Zionism’s ?

Didn’t Peter Gabriel write a song about this issue in the late
70s/early 80s, something about “piss on the goons in the jungle”?
It was a satire of course. Alas the world didn’t care and the war
machine rolled on. Make no mistake, my friends, it’s all of us who
are being pissed on while being told it’s a warm spring rain. Be
that as it may, here’s the lyric poem by Mr. Gabriel.

—

Games Without Frontiers

Hans plays with Lotte, Lotte plays with Jane
Jane plays with Willi, Willi is happy again
Suki plays with Leo, Sacha plays with Britt
Adolf builts a bonfire, Enrico plays with it—Whistling tunes we hide in the dunes by the seaside—Whistling tunes we’re kissing baboons in the jungle
It’s a knockout
If looks could kill, they probably will
In games without frontiers—war without tears
Games without frontiers—war without tears

Jeux sans frontieres

Andre has a red flag, Chiang Ching’s is blue
They all have hills to fly them on except for Lin Tai Yu
Dressing up in costumes, playing silly games
Hiding out in tree-tops shouting out rude names—Whistling tunes we hide in the dunes by the seaside—Whistling tunes we piss on the goons in the jungle
It’s a knockout
If looks could kill they probably will
In games without frontiers-wars without tears
If looks could kill they probably will
In games without frontiers—war without tears
Games without frontiers—war without tears

According to my dictionary “desecrate” means, “to
violate sacredness.” Isn’t life sacred? Didn’t
the marines desecrate the lives of the people in
the villages when they KILLED them? WHO MADE AMERICA
GOD? Why are American troops in other parts of the
world trying to tell them how to run their lives?

While in and of itself, pissing on dead bodies is nothing new but the fact it was televised worldwide will create a recruiting tool for those wishing harm against all Marines and ultimately the American citizen.

Those who are recruited may have been sitting on the sidelines and now with rightful moral indignation are going to fight. They will fight for a cause and not for money and that is what separates a moral from an immoral war.

People sitting at home in clean white shirts should not be too quick to judge what young men do in combat— but they always do.

My concern is not with the actions of a few undisciplined troops after the kill, but with politicians who send them to the other side of the planet on a fool’s errand and are then “shocked” to learn that endless war results in acts of barbarism.

These incidents and much worse will increase with each additional month we remain in Afghanistan. Bring them home where they belong and put them to constructive work rebuilding infrastructure.

I agree with the last secretary of defense: —“Any commander in chief that sends the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines to chase a few hundred militia men through the mountains of Afghanistan should have his head examined.” After ten years instead of a few hundred there are tens of thousands who will die for the chance to kill US servicemen.

The USA has become an international bully in the eyes of many countries, which is perfectly understandable. The current crop of GOP candidates can’t wait to start on Iran. Not that the Dems are much better. If I were a third world government official I would get a nuclear weapon as soon as possible. We don’t seem to bother those who have it.

In no way do I condone what these Marines have done. I do have to wonder if this incident may have been the result of these marines repeatedly seeing, first hand, how the Taliban treat their killed and captured. - The Taliban regularly mutilate their captured and killed in order to humiliate their foes. In fact it’s common in many cultures.

It’s good that Americans find this behavior appalling. Let’s not allow some here to indict all of American culture over this atrocious incident.

It seems impolite and bad manners to piss on someone you just killed, especially when it was premeditated instead of spontaneous.

Republicans, for years have been pissing on on the American living populism, but Repulcians know better than to get caught doing it on video, ... oh wait the Republican Debates may have been on the media for this whole pissing thing except the Repulcians are now pissing big time on the dead middle class!

Hell, the Supreme Court just pissed on the 99 percent I guess this means pissing on the down and out, then after they are dead is the law of the land and now the law of the world?

the Taliban did control Afghanistan for years.
Was Afghanistan free? A man could be whipped if
his beard was too short and a woman is she exposed
even a little of her skin. And the Taliban were very respectful of other peoples faith. They were the thugs who blew up the Buddha statues. The Taliban were
also deeply involved in 9/11.
As far as those marines,upon thinking about it, it’s proper etiquette to urinate in a toilet which is exactly what those marines did.

I read the story and then read the comments, which left me full of anger at the neocons and their puppet GW Bush. You see how this bastard Bush and his neocon friends have caused this nation to become so use to war that an uncivilized act like this is accepted by many. We are better than this!

“diamond, exactly what is it that you know that allows you ascertain that the dead
were farmers and not taliban.

Do you own a Taliban handbook that has a prominent no-farmers rule?”

Hilarious. And I’m assuming you must have a handbook with the names of all Taliban members listed in it and these dead farmers are in your book? No? Then you have no proof that they were Taliban any more than I have proof that they were not. But I know how things are done when the US military has occupied a third world country like Afghanistan. I know how one towel head is very much the same to them as any other and how any towel head not part of the Karzai Mafia is Taliban and can therefore be killed and pissed on. A similar process went on in Iraq and with the ‘gooks’ of Vietnam where hunting parties were organized to hunt Vietnamese as if they were animals from whom trophies could be taken and war was a sport.

Once you become a non person you have no rights, not even the right to life and the right not to be pissed on when you’re dead. All this kind of behaviour can do is create hatred and contempt among those America wishes to conquer. It already has and the war in Afghanistan is already lost which only makes the violence and lawlessness even more pathetic.

“Uh huh. Sounds like the kind of expertise one gets
from an education in the West. Still live in America,
eh? The cognitive dissonance must be crippling.”

This is not about where he lives. This is about some dumbshit marines peeing on dead farmers and claiming they’re Taliban. This is about man’s inhumanity to man not about someone’s address. Typical of an apologist for the US military war machine to claim the issue is where a person with a different opinion to yours lives. You are simply indulging in mindless distraction from the truth. Why do you care where he lives? Planning to go around and egg his house? Or to piss on him? Dimwit.

I’m sitting in my chair watching the 11 pm(Eastern
Time) news when the reporters start discussing a story where some marines killed some Taliban and are being charged with desecrating the dead
bodies by urinating on them. I yelled, “WHAT?”
I came to truthdig to see if the story is on here.
Have people really gone crazy? It’s acceptable to
desecrate a live person by killing them but God
forbid that you should desecrate a DEAD body by
urinating on it. I do not understand the logic.
Will someone please clarify this situation for me?
Thank you.

you’re a citizen in you own private Idaho and are so self-important and so
transparently not an expert at anything except your own very narrow POV that it
makes it hard to take you as being a grown-up person.